What would you think of a huge pharmaceutical company suing a country to make state-run hospitals use its eye drug, which costs over $1,000 more than a replacement?
Greedy, right? But that’s not exactly what’s happening. Yes, drug maker Novartis is taking legal action in Britain to make state-run hospitals use an eye drug that costs about 700 pounds ($1,130) per shot instead of a cheaper one that costs 60 pounds ($97), according to a story by Maria Cheng.
But it’s not because the drug giant wants more money, but because the cheaper eye drug may not work nearly as well, according to Cheng. She writes that in a statement, Novartis claimed judicial review was its “last resort” because it believed patient safety was at risk.
Novartis' Lucentis has been named the only drug recommended to treat macular degeneration in the country's state-run National Health Service (NHS) hospitals, Cheng reports.
But several NHS hospitals have opted for the much cheaper Avastin, a cancer drug made by a Novartis competitor, Genentech Inc., a subsidiary of Roche, for the condition even though it has not been officially approved, according to the story.
Cheng writes that a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine last year demonstrated that Avastin and Lucentis worked equally well for treating the eye disorder.
That’s because Lucentis and Avastin “act on the same biological protein in the body to spur blood vessel growth,” Cheng reveals, and thrifty eye doctors have often used miniscule amounts of Avastin, then billed the government for the cost, rather than buying Lucentis. Last year, four hospitals in southern England decided they would pay for Avastin when it was prescribed by a doctor.
Most U.K. doctors only prescribe drugs approved by “the health watchdog” (official ombudsmen who oversee health), according to Cheng, but do have the right to use other treatments if they believe they are warranted.
So far Britain's drug regulator has not approved Avastin for eye diseases, so it has not been blessed by the health service's advisory agency, known as NICE, which makes decisions based only on cost-effectiveness, Cheng writes, adding that agency officials said they would need further information from the drug regulator to decide whether Avastin should be used for patients with macular degeneration.
Novartis AG, which issued a statement Tuesday saying it was going to court to make the hospitals use Lucentis, not Avastin, said it was worried clinicians were being ordered to prescribe for patients an unlicensed – and possibly useless or dangerous – medicine to cut costs.
And, of course, the forces who hate decisions like this being made in court came out against the suit, too.
“Companies like Novartis should not be in the position to block moves to more cost-effective treatments in order to maximize their profits,” said John Harris, of the Institute for Science Ethics and Innovation at the University of Manchester, in a statement, Cheng writes, adding that he told her it was “legitimate for health providers to use treatments that were much cheaper than ones that were already licensed.”
The Guardian’s Sarah Boseley sums it up. “This is about medicines priced too high by multinational corporations for them to be affordable for all who need them,” she writes. “In the UK, those who could benefit could be given Lucentis, but the bill to the NHS would be enormous and there is a danger that some sort of rationing will take place, such as treating only those who are most likely to improve. And a soaring drugs bill means less money for the NHS to spend on other sorts of care.”
Edited by
Jennifer Russell
